Letters to the editor: May 26 to June 1 2017

Kamanzi and Fallists must own up

I love Brian Kamanzi’s explanation that, at the University of Cape Town on February 16 last year, “fires broke out across parts of the campus” (UCT’s TRC a weapon in a proxy war”). Are we meant to believe in spontaneous combustion?

What happened was that Kamanzi’s comrades, after incinerating 23 artworks, including paintings by Richard Keresemose Baholo and collages commemorating the life and work of Molly Blackburn, set fire to university vehicles and to the vice-chancellor’s office.

That Kamanzi cannot bring himself to be honest about these facts tells you what you need to know about the intellectual integrity of Fallism.

Its bad faith is further demonstrated by Kamanzi’s admission that his petition calling for the establishment of a “Shackville TRC” was a stratagem “proposed to demonstrate the hypocrisy of liberal institutions”. No wonder he is now against the Institutional Reconciliation and Truth Commission (IRTC)!

Most of UCT’s 35 000 staff and students opposed the agreement setting up the IRTC for a different reason: we saw it as a capitulation to lawlessness negotiated between the vice-chancellor Max Price and nine unelected students under the threat of continued violence and intimidation. – William Daniels, Cape Town

Give back our land – and don’t pay compensation

The land policy of the ruling party that claims to be the oldest political formation in Africa has failed dismally. South Africa’s land is still owned by the minority, 80% by colonialist masters, while millions of black people live in pigsty-like shacks. South Africa can’t be called Azania, land of black people.

It is conveniently forgotten that South Africa’s land was taken through black genocide, and it is a “fool who buys his stolen cattle”. “Willing buyer, willing seller” has failed many people in South Africa, and anyone who still questions the redistribution of land without payment suffers from a pathological colonial mentality.

It is difficult for a white man to understand the clarion call for the expropriation of land without payment, because they do not know the pain of being landless.

We saw it when the ANC negotiated with the National Party before the downfall of apartheid; even after the downfall, white people are not willing to surrender the land that they have stolen.

We are still being led by people who cannot change the land policy that has failed black people. Even a toothless child could understand that the ruling party has failed black people on the issue of land; land is vital, and the ANC was formed to carry out the issue of land that was taken at gunpoint.

Expropriation of land without compensation is the solution to all of this, because without land we are nothing. It is high time South Africans unite to ensure that land is given back to the rightful owners. Our people were brutally assassinated by imperialists for the wealth of their country but we South Africans are not calling for war – through legislation, we can expropriate land without payment for equal distribution.

In South Africa there are many whites who are only “passport citizens” for the privilege of accessing Azania’s riches and business. They owe their allegiance elsewhere, to places such as Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States. They do not worry about the suffering of our people, the landless of the South African people. They have large golf courses while our people are landless. Let us unite, South Africans, and call for expropriation of land without compensation for equal distribution.

Without land, we are not Azanians. We are colonially owned. Land must be given to black people because most people who live in squalid, inhuman settlements fit only for pigs are African. They have fewer resources such as hospitals and clinics.

Yet this is all happening in their own land. How come? When we speak the truth, we are called racist. It can’t be.

It is a fact that South African wealth since 1909 has not translated into decent wages and living conditions for Africans. The dependency mentality of South African leaders on Western countries must end. Africa must be for Africans, and we expropriate land without compensation. – Ntiyiso Joe Mazibuko

Cyril slips back into his natural role

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa’s reassurance to Moody’s that the ANC would never split could well be the real thing. His address to his own enthusiastic ANC and South African Communist Party supporters at the Moses Kotane Memorial Lecture in symbolic Rustenburg shows the groundwork for him to return quietly to 1994, when he was the chosen deputy and anointed successor to Nelson Mandela.

In 2012, after 15 years in the wilderness, he returned to his formerly allocated role. From this powerful position he quietly undertook his return, while fulfilling his present seriously tainted boss’s bidding.

The Ahmed Kathrada memorials brought to light the popular groundswell that had been brewing, which gave Ramaphosa the necessary reassurance to finally break cover and nail his flag to the presidential mast.

Almost unnoticed, his voice in the electronic and print media slipped into the mould of the trusted and familiar head of state. He had already redefined the empty “radical economic transformation” battle cry as a return to the “reconstruction and development programme”, in a nonracial society closely negotiated and then voted for in 1994. – Balt Verhagen, Bramley

Discipline is a basic norm and life skill

I wonder if the author of Does discipline equal distinction? has taught in a public school. Discipline is not what schools dictate; it is what is expected in society – basic norms and values by which society functions. Don’t blame the schools. They are trying to operate in an under-resourced environment dealing with people coming from a myriad broken backgrounds. Trying to suggest Finnish-style individualism for learners who don’t have a basic respect for how a society operates is naive and problematic. – Droozat, online

l My child can maintain a 60% [average] and spend more time on YouTube watching Bratayley than doing revision. Restricting YouTube to weekends and helping with revision has her at a 90% average and the only loser is Bratayley. The trick is balance: life skills, resilience and discipline. Discipline can lead to a life where financial concerns are secondary to enjoying life and love as an adult. – Camille, online

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The National Health Laboratory Services finally admitted to a bottleneck last week, after denying there were any issues since April. According to the service, the backlog of 80 000 tests started in the first week of May